Greetings! I glad to announce the launch of the "Serious Journey" map contest.

The participants of this contest have to show their creativity in the scope of strict limitations. The central theme is Ancient Egypt with elements of Sci-Fi from the First Encounter. The technical basis for the work of participants is the classic The Second Encounter. Within the scope of the theme, participants can embody almost any type of visual style and gameplay. The main thing that should be felt is the spirit of the original game and pseudo-historical fiction. Participant can create, like ancient cities and temples in the middle of desert, and the interiors of high-tech spaceships or technobases, alien megacities on other planets, and anything else. The resources of the First Encounter are available below. You must put the gro-file in the TSE root directory.

The aim of the competition is to encourage to share their creativity, as many people as possible. Authors, just starting to learn Serious Editor are welcome here, as well as everyone who, for the sake of participating in this event, will decide for the first time to try themselves as a mapper. The rules do not imply strict quality control. To all submitted maps will be assigned a certain number of points, in accordance with their degree of quality. Map will be rejected only if it has a critical visual or gameplay corruptions. By publishing their work, the authors will receive recommendations to increase its final assessment. It is important to note that maps with same score, priority will be given to the one that was submitted over before the others (without taking into account subsequent fixes).

It is important to understand that the guide leading to the prize places is an organic visual style of the map, as well as a balanced gameplay. Participants need to fully focus on the quality level of Croteam maps in the First Encounter, and try to surpass it as much as they can. The story component is welcomed as a way to emphasize the atmosphere, but it does not carry a significant weight in the final score. Influence on the ratings will have various puzzles, highlighting the central theme and encouraging players to explore the map. Participants need to try to make their work sufficiently voluminous and long (about 30 minutes or more) to take a really high score.

Discussion of contest conditions, work of other authors, announcement of any ideas about this event is strongly encouraged. It would be nice if authors shared screenshots of their work during the development. At the end of the deadline (December 31, 2018), all maps will be compiled into a single mappack. The plans are to create a hub-map, but this is still a controversial issue. All contestants will receive Steam-keys to choose from.

The works of the participants will be evaluated according to several criteria, given below. Within each, the map can collect a range of scores, which are summed up into the overall rating. There are also bonus conditions, the value of which directly depends on the duration of the map and conformity to central theme. Some of the bonus conditions are mutually excluded. I will be the only person responsible for ratings, and will try to report in detail for each assigned score. Since my vision of good architecture in many aspects may not coincide with the views of the authors, everyone should be prepared to make changes in their works to encrease map rating... or not... I hope it will be fun ...

>Visual conformity to the central theme [1 ... 15 points].
Points are awarded for the expressiveness of the visual style of the map and how it is organic. An example of an organic style can serve as maps of the First Encounter. It is estimated as a successful finding in texturing, and study of architecture. Particular attention is paid to working with lighting. Minimalism and excess abstractness can collect here a minimum of points, but architectural experiments, on the contrary.

Bonus conditions:
[0 ... 7 points] Make a map using only standard resources of the First Encounter (here new textures are allowed for terrains, skybox and reliefs).
[5 points] During the passage of map FPS should not fall down below 20. (I will judge by my PC)
[0 ... 5 points] The presence of author's or third-party models.
[0 ... 5 points] The presence of author's or third-party textures.
[0 ... 3 points] The presence of author's or third-party background music.
[0 ... 3 points] The presence of author's or third-party sound effects.
[0 ... 3 points] The abundance of open areas on the map.

>Feeling of the gameplay [1 ... 15 points].
Points are awarded for a sense of balance when designing gameplay. Assessing the ability to effectively use opponents, create ambushes, traps, unexpected situations. "Kleer out of the corner," "9000 toads per second from the ceiling", "and here we suddenly spawn 50 scorpions at all sides" - it's all rather negative examples. Attempts to artificially increase the duration due to huge crowds of monsters will not raise the score of the map. Significantly increase the score will help the gameplay elements of puzzles, but do not neglect the classic gameplay.

Bonus conditions:
[0 ... 7 points] The presence of a story, emphasizing the atmosphere of what is happening.
[0 ... 5 points] The presence of transport systems and mechanisms (eg elevators, local teleports, etc.)
[0 ... 5 points] Water, acid, electricity or fire (light from torches / flame from flamethrower, etc.) are important gameplay elements.
[0 ... 5 points] The presence of gameplay ideas that require non-standard use of weapons (the mechanisms that opens by shot; detonated barriers; use grenades to destroy the non-visible goals, etc.)
[5 points] Opponents always appear without spawn effects, and the player can not see their appearance.
[5 points] Upon passing map, player can face absolutely every kind (including subspecies) of standard opponents in the game (bosses are not counted)
[5 points] Upon passing map, the player can be attacked by not more than 10 opponents at the same time.
[0 ... 3 points] The map has a central location, to which the player must return many times during the passage.
[0 ... 3 points] Implementation of gravity anomalies.
[3 points] No areas or objects that cause fatal damage to the player (spikes, abyss, crushers, etc.)
[3 points] There are no enemies on the map that cause explosive damage.
[3 points] There is no SBC Cannon and Superbomb on the map.

Opportunities:

> A participant can announce his intention to join the project at any time before the deadline. To do this, just write to me on the PM on the site, in this thread, or directly publish your work here.

> Participants can publish maps on any convenient sites to receive feedback from players. The main thing is that in this topic there is a link to the topic with the map, and in the topic with your map there was a link to this contest ... The publication of maps directly in the topic of the competition is also welcome, although if we have many maps here (for me it's not harmful to dream ...), it will create difficulties in our discussion.

> During the entire available development period, authors are willing to contribute to their work any changes, as well as publish preliminary versions.

> If the author has got into a creative or technical impasse, permissible replacement of the old work by a completely new one.

Limitations:

> All work must be completed by December 31, 2018. A map that is not ready for this deadline can not be nominated for participation in next year contest, because there the theme will be different (if at all it be ...).

> The map must be executed for the Serious Engine 1.07 (The Second Encounter) engine. Maps for Revolution and modern engines will not be able to participate in this contest. It is allowed to use the resources of the First Encounter only from the resource-pack presented here.

> Each author taking part can submit only one map (1 wld-file in the gro-archive). Mappaks will be rejected. It is assumed that each author leads the development only individually.

> Maps created based on the geometry of previously published maps (including original TFE and TSE maps) will be rejected. It is allowed if, within the scopes of the competition, the author submits and continues to develop his previously unpublished frozen project. Copying of some individual architecture elements from Croteam maps not forbidden, and for beginners even welcome.

> The total archive size with all resources can not exceed 50 MB. No matter how great your work is, it will not be able to compete for prizes at the exhaustion of this limit. You will have to publish it as a separate project.

> It is not allowed to use any resources extracted from commercial games (including other Croteam games) or their modified versions. If the author uses freely distributed resources, then it is required to indicate their authorship and source (here in the topic or in the info-file).

> When creating a project, the author needs to sort the resources by folders appropriating to their types (Sounds, Textures, Models, etc.) without subdirectories and without the prefix "MP" or others. No changes to the original names of the resource files. This is a measure to exclude duplicate files when assembling a mappack. It does not apply to completely author's content. When duplicates appear, the author will be asked to fix the map (which is rather dreary). Because, please, keep this in mind.

> You can not change or replace the original TSE resource files and the provided TFE resource pack. Creating your own resources on the basis of files from TSE and TFE is not prohibited.

[0 ... 7 points] Make a map using only standard resources of the First Encounter (here new textures are allowed for terrains, skybox and reliefs). - Okay so we can only use TFE textures, music, sounds etc.

[0 ... 5 points] The presence of author's or third-party models.
[0 ... 5 points] The presence of author's or third-party textures.
[0 ... 3 points] The presence of author's or third-party background music.
[0 ... 3 points] The presence of author's or third-party sound effects.
- Okay so now we must add new sounds, music, textures etc. to get additional points

[5 points] Opponents always appear without spawn effects, and the player can not see their appearance. - no corridor fights. So now I can't build a big desert fight

[5 points] Upon passing map, player can face absolutely every kind (including subspecies) of standard opponents in the game (bosses are not counted)
But
[3 points] There are no enemies on the map that cause explosive damage. - No kamikaze, red biomech, demon, cannon bomberman, lava golem and zum bul

[5 points] Upon passing map, the player can be attacked by not more than 10 opponents at the same time. - I hope you don't mean that I can't spawn more than 10 enemies to fight Sam.

Mappaks will be rejected - is this rule made to make mappers angry?

The total archive size with all resources can not exceed 50 MB - 20MB will be the textures alone, so we have 30MB to add music, sounds, models and messages. But wait a minute

It is not allowed to use any resources extracted from commercial games - so we can't use music and sounds from other games

Checked it now and both demons and lava golems have no explosive damage. They are bonus points, but if I would not try to get them, the maximum amount of points i can get is 30, when with bonuses it's 30 + 31 + 52 = 113. I am still thinking about going into it, but I will ignore those bonus points.

Please, pay special attention that most bonus conditions have a gradation of points, which depended on the duration of the gameplay or influence on map visuals. And I will judge this very subjectively, not taking into account unjustified delays with the monotonous gameplay, wandering in search of the right switch and so on. The maximum score can be taken only if the "positive" duration is more than 30 minutes.